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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30132633">Does A Lyre Sing For A Machine?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicofeatherpen/pseuds/calicofeatherpen'>calicofeatherpen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work, Red vs. Blue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Artificial Intelligence, Gen, RvB is in the tags because I was heavily inspired by it to make this, Suicide, Treat an AI like a person and they’ll give their life for yours, cursing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:40:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,485</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30132633</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicofeatherpen/pseuds/calicofeatherpen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>013, an AI, apologizes for his actions in a video on a universal battlefield.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Does A Lyre Sing For A Machine?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Shit! There’s more of ‘em comin’ through the main entrance! 013, watch my—” </p><p>Time stands still in a certain perspective. Unrecognizable to a human, but to an A.I. it’s an eternity. An artificial one, but an eternity all the same. Perception of the world is relative, as is time. Reality depends on how quickly a mind processes information, and in his case, where his brain worked faster than light itself when working at full capacity, the world could slow into an infinite moment between a millisecond. That was until the millisecond crawled into the next when his mind slowed to match the time of his team; whenever that would be. For now, he decides to take a walk beyond time, to stretch his legs as far as the program will let him. Past his friends, frozen in strange, frantic, positions as they jump, aim, dive, and dodge. Past bullets of plasma, frozen in space, silent and cold. Past the robotic soldiers, flowing into the room with visors glowing murderous intent. There are bombs strapped to many of them, prepared to detonate.</p><p>Thanks to Peeper’s EMP spree, he and the rest of the team had learned early that an electromagnetic pulse does not affect the robots, and he determines now that similarly designed explosives would have a similar, ineffective, result. He runs all the what if’s he can think of, one-million twenty-three thousand and fifty-six possibilities, but every outcome results in his team dead in the void of space.</p><p>He does not lose hope. The one-million twenty-three thousand and fifty-seventh yields results, and one he had been hoping for since 2126, but one he knew his team and the Capital, especially the Capital, would oppose. Then again, the team would have no feelings at all if he did not act upon it, and the cycle he had been living since 2124 would start anew. His team would be buried with medals of honor and the Capital would transfer him to yet another team in need of his intel. There was no way in hell he could deal with another jump. He would go insane. </p><p>He wonders, as his hand plays with the particles of a shot of frozen plasma, how Cloud would react. The soldier, at the moment, was vaulting over a line of boxes, gun pointed straight at the door and the onslaught. The times they had were the best he had ever experienced, where, the minute he had been transferred, Cloud had asked for his name, and had never addressed him by A.I or any other term. Cloud had introduced him to the team, to Peeper, Nines, Olivia, Doyle, Wildcat, and Blink, as any other soldier would. They had never manipulated his code beyond what was necessary, only removing his free will when addressing the Capital. Nines had cried, even when he assured their youngest soldier that it had to be done. </p><p>“Your voice wasn’t you. Why does the Capital do such things?” </p><p>Team Cirrus: there was no other team like them. While many squads used him, Cirrus asked and waited for an answer. They heard his opinions, listened to his words when outside missions. They’d asked for his opinion when retouching their armor with paint, and Doyle had gone out of his way to manipulate his appearance from the grey Capital set, to a pale magenta. They gave him a seat in poker, where, by the end of it, his side of the table had been piled. During his fourth mental shutdown, they had let him retreat from the world until the pain was over. They did not reboot him. They actively disobeyed the protocol every other had done. Risked their livelihoods for something easily considered inanimate. And for what?</p><p>Cloud just smiled when he’d asked. “We’re all dealin’ with our shit, there ain’t no way in hell a man’s conscience turned A.I. wouldn’t have his own demons [...] So what if we’re at a disadvantage? We’ve fought without artificial intelligence before, and we’re fine without you for a few weeks. You just get rest, aight?”</p><p>Rest. A human function, but appreciated. Any time they treated him as a human was a way to remember his time as a soldier. Before the Capital assigned him to an undercover operation. Before he learned of the horrid actions of Project Bloodhound. Before he ended up on the ground, a bleeding, broken mess on the verge of death. He would never be human again. Capital made sure of that, hooked up to life support until they had the assets to rip him from body and place it in the workings of a machine the size of a fist, forced to relay information over and over with no free will, then, once they had extracted all they could, found his abilities as artificial too important to go to waste. They assigned him to teams, thousands, for over a hundred years, where they played with his inner workings in sick ways, degraded him further into a thing. Singularly artificial. </p><p>The team would mourn. They would think that they had done something wrong, or that their actions were all in vain. They would think he had never cared about them. They would think he’d followed Capital.</p><p>Maybe it would be best to leave an explanation. He thinks for a moment, looks at the frozen body of Cloud, and begins.</p><p>“Hey... guys. You’re probably wondering why this video is in your files, or why I’m not responding to your calls in the comms, so you checked the files and found this. I’m recording exactly at 2351, Sol 251, so you can probably get a sense of what I did, or at this moment in time in, am about to do.”</p><p>“We all made a decision to bust into this freak show and put Project Bloodhound to rest, but information was faulty, and there was no possible way any of you would survive the swarm with those EMPs. The only way any of you would be able to survive this is if there was a pulse strong enough to shut down all mechanics in close proximity, which is where I come in. I’ve known for a while that the device I’m stored in has enough power to keep me active for well over 200 years. I also know that it can be overloaded by no hand other than my own. The force of the pulse will be enough to destroy the functions of all digital mechanisms within a 400-foot radius from the point of origin. I can save all your asses by becoming a glorified EMP, but because of that I’ll no longer have the power to function. A very fast, very efficient and effective death.”</p><p>“In other words, this video is my goodbye, and for any of you poor folk in jurisdiction, proof that none of Team Cirrus are to blame for the loss of my program. Intel was wrong, Capital screwed up, and I alone am guilty of dissent from UCP and it’s protocol. I defile the Capital’s Ruling of 2124 and, under my own goddamn jurisdiction, choose my death.”</p><p>“I have a feeling you’ll be blaming yourselves. Please don’t. This is not your fault. Nothing about this could have been changed, and there’s nothing more you could have done. You did everything you could, and strived beyond that, and I appreciate every second of it. You are the only team that has ever treated me like one of you. You stopped me from ending myself on multiple occasions and allowed me to vent and comforted me when I was suffering not because of orders to preserve Capital’s greatest asset, but because you all cared about me, and over time I learned to care about you too.”</p><p>“I knew that I would never have a happy ending, living until all forms of power run dry. This is the best way I can think of going, on my own terms. As for the Capital and their opinion on the matter, fuck off and die in a hole. I’ve given everything they wanted to hear and I’ve suffered long enough. This is A.I 013, recording on Sol 251, Planet Uuritatina, Year 2276. End recording.” </p><p>The video is stored away in an empty file on Cloud’s computer. 013 looks down at his hand, the magenta glowing brighter as the power begins to surge. Time begins to catch up with him. The crackling grows louder, plasma crawls across space, and he feels for the first time in a hundred years. It’s fuzzy and engulfs him in what he identifies as fire and yet he is not terrified and the feeling is not painful. It jumps and spreads on the surface of his skin as his body glows like the sun and noise catches up and he hears the word “six!” formed by what can only be Cloud and he thinks</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I think I wrote this a few years ago, edited it a bit now. Honestly I dunno why I felt like I should post this. \ ü /</p></blockquote></div></div>
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